On November 12 and 13, students completed math, reading comprehension, and writing assessments based on their courses from last school year for a Fall Field Test. “As a field test, it does not count for graduation and the scores are not impacting any students individually,” Assistant Principal Dargento clarified. “Rather, the purpose of the test is to allow students to become familiar with the new testing platform and help the new testing company to see how the questions they have developed are received by students.”
This assessment, although completed on a staggered schedule to reduce the amount of lost class time, still impacted learning. English teacher Mrs. Loccke commented, “Our new schedule creates breaks where we don’t see students for 2-4 days at a time, so any additional disruptions makes it very hard to stay consistent and get forward progress.” Already with the new rotating block changes, teachers have been modifying their lesson structures. Administering a field test is yet another scheduling challenge to adapt to, but the administration has been diligently working to maintain an optimal learning environment.
For the 2026 NJSLA and NJGPA tests, the New Jersey Department of Education is using a different assessment company, Cambium Assessment. These tests will be different from past exams as they will be adaptive, meaning that the level of difficulty of the questions will change depending on the individual student’s accuracy. This form of adaptive assessments is not new. As the type of exam issued is a state-level decision, New Jersey is not the first state to make this change, but it most certainly will not be the last. Interim Director of Curriculum Mr. Groh explained, “The idea is that the stress level for students should be minimized as they will only be asked appropriately challenging questions that align to what they demonstrate knowing. The challenge for school districts is that it will be more difficult to compare results and specific data since the assessments are not completely common.” While the field test was not adaptive, its data on the questions will be used to generate scoring models, issue valid questions, and improve quality of the spring assessments. Junior Kate Seyffer commented, “I’m interested to see how the fall field test may impact the NJGPA in the spring.”
